


De-Fragmentation

by Radiolaria



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-27
Updated: 2013-03-27
Packaged: 2017-12-06 16:50:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/737927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Radiolaria/pseuds/Radiolaria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He doesn’t want to be him. It seems he cannot help it."</p>
            </blockquote>





	De-Fragmentation

**Author's Note:**

> A melting pot of ideas I had quite while back that melted into this monster. I needed to get it out of my system. Sorry.
> 
>    
> Not beta read. Any mistake is mine. Especially with computers.

 

He can’t sleep.

He watches himself whenever he slips into dream. Flashes of a previous life beat his mind until he is on the brink of screaming. He catches himself just before he does. The fear of waking her practically keeps him awake.

But she is there, eyes wide-open, guarding his side, and she takes him into her arms, easing his choked breath against her shoulder, which feels bare without her hair – she wears them short now, convinced a woman of forty should not have long hair. Jackie growled at that.

He can’t escape.

It is a strange and tearing sensation he gets every time he passes the door of his TARDIS. He knows she gets it too, when she visits. But she does not that often.

The TARDIS he has been growing is still young, so small, much less of an old friend to them. And she is incapable of dealing with that, not yet. She grew to love him, over the years, as someone different from the other one. He thinks he deserves the peace of mind in their relationship at least. He had been hoping for so long.

For years, his mind was occupied by the perpetual quest for love at her side, his mind processing every little gesture she had, every smile and tear. It was a nerve-wracking and tireless census, followed by hours of catastrophic scenarios, where he would realise she takes him for second best. Had he the power to give him the Doctor, he would.

He probably has. It shatters his body, to the bones, when the thought occurs to him.

After all, he did exterminate a Dalek fleet.

He can’t quite come around the fact he has been left behind on account of genocide. Rubbish. He has done it before and, knowing himself, he will do it again. Well, not himself, but him, the other Doctor, the proper Doctor, the one she used to refer to as a widow would.

He wonders. He, how did he take the events? How fared his hearts? Are they both at the same point? He fears for him.

There was a time his mind and the Doctor’s fitted perfectly into one another and he did not like the thoughts he witnessed in his head. A lonely God. Maybe. Yet so far he had remained oblivious to it. Came Davros who voiced his suspicions and secret fears. The parting of the ways was only a confirmation. He chose for Jack, Jackie, Rose, Donna. To go was not their choice.

No. He did not choose; the Doctor did.

Even himself had to abide by the Doctor’s choices. It was after him, after his birth, that he broke up Donna, a weapon for him to discard when it became too dangerous. Like putting down a dog.

After him. Yet he knew because he had shared the thoughts about her. She  _needed_  to be mind-wiped.

The decision was not his. In the end he would have done the same.

This is probably what she cannot help but despise, a little, every time she looks at him, over coffee, behind a book, through those round glasses she started wearing and which make her eyes even brighter.

Being human, being mortal, he would have done the same.

Loving her and understanding her, he would have ripped them apart. The Doctor and Rose, in the Tardis, never together again.

He cannot make his peace with it.

Left behind but not killed –that’s definitely something his ninth incarnation would have done in an access of white fury. He would have seen it as mercy at the time.

At the time.

There is a life for him, here, a good life, where he is, he figured it out at last, loved.

Loved probably, but she is grieving him. That’s why she cannot bear to enter their TARDIS.

And now, when he rid himself of that suspicion she does not love him enough, he fears more than anything he might hurt her. He wants so much from her, for her. At last, he is beginning to understand how much of a danger the Doctor is to people. He wants to fix her, to make amend for that mad man.

He doesn’t want to be him. It seems he cannot help it.

He fears the similarity in their heart.

The moment he yells at her or kisses her even, he feels himself mentally pushed back against that wall – that boundary inside his mind between the other and himself. Except he does not know which side of the wall he stands.

It is driving him insane. Pete says it is nothing but mid-life crisis. He doesn’t believe it. He feels trapped. There will come a time when he will manipulate her into doing something or when he will blow her mind on a TARDIS trip. How does one become the Doctor? Too much love, too much infinite, too little rules. The moment he passes his frame of mind, neither of them will recover from the blow.

To come to term with it, but how? To cut any loose end, but how? His path, his choices, probably shapes what he is. His birth might have taken place in the heat of battle, his mind feels like this was part of his previous life, his Doctor life. Yet he still has a memory that dates back to the beginning of time and a trail of dead bodies matches his shadow. In the middle, his humanity is miserably hanging to that thought, simple and clear, that she loves him, despite the Doctor. They are growing old together, they are building a life, now, a boring and glorious life.

He still has to make his way out of the Doctor’s path and he fears it is impossible without any knowledge of his whereabouts. If Rose can’t go out, nothing can come in either.

It’s the TARDIS who brings out the memory; she is clumsy when it comes to coordinates and times and places. Funnily, he is the one who guides her and talks her through some basic landings. But she handles very well any redecorations. When he stumbles upon the library made anew, he understands. It is a fairly accurate replica of another library, the Library, filled with spoilers, shadows and stories.

He may hear the end of this one.

***

It turns out the Library exists in this Universe and luckily has no trouble whatsoever with shadows. Still unsure about what his ship wants him to do, he flies her to the planet, this time inhabited by whispers, rustle and footsteps. He takes a stroll between the readers and the alleys. It is beautiful - was he too busy to notice it the first time or too world-weary? Light is pouring on the shelves, children are running to the fairy-tale section and conniving librarians plotting against an uncooperative trolley. And the smell of book mixing with that disgusting and reassuring brew of humanity.

The faces on the automatons moving about are unknown to him. Of course.

He finds his way to the core of the planet and even without psychic paper manages to reach the mainframe. A wave of uncertainty flows past him as he edges close to the keyboad. There is no way she is trapped on this side too. The Library data core is practically a parallel Universe. That’s it. Practically. The data are still physically stored in another dimension.

Still, the TARDIS wants him here for a reason.

But he is a fool and enters her name, unsuccessfully. Her absence from the index strikes him as odd though. Surely her thesis must have been registered. Or Professor River Song does not have any reality in this Universe. It has always been a possibility. Not anyone benefits from an alter-ego. The Doctor didn’t.

There is a chance it is protected information. Pete turned out to be pretty prominent. The likes of the woman may well have countries at her feet. He glances sideways, stretches his hand, switches some wires, types some numbers and fiddles with his own sonic device, a Swiss knife. There are sparks and suddenly the air seems to fall into stasis.

The result is certainly unexpected, the reality of the machines around him seems to lose its evidence, plastered on thin air, as if lacking in a third dimension. Nothing in his surroundings is altered. The interface of the mainframe stands as before waiting for his instructions.

The hum of the machine before him is different.

He suspects the TARDIS has something to do with it.

He audibly gulps in the silence of the room and gives another try at the search.

Her name is in the data core, as a program.

Somehow the data he is scrolling past are those of a library from another dimension.

 _My Girl, what have you done this time?_ She certainly is hot-headed. The instability seems manageable and she willing to carry on with the experiment. She has materialised just behind him. Such a precise and silent landing deserves praise. Better keep it for later.

_On with the show._

He can’t summon the Professor’s face on the automaton, _that_ would create a hole in the fabric of his reality, but he may interact with her on the computer. Naturally, the probability for her to be _interactive_ enough to form phrases in words rather than numbers is rather low….

“Doctor?” flickers on the screen before he has time to think of what to say.

He is excited. He shouldn’t be, he realises. She is, after all, dead. But she could save him.

The chance of solace chasing away any doubts about how she would manage it.

His fingers are haphazardly trembling while he types: ”Professor Snog Song sorry”

“This is Charlotte, not River.”

He feels a pang in his chest.

He forgot.

He forgot the little girl trapped in there as well. Even with a brown-eyed and freckled little girl of his own.

“This is not the Doctor either. I am John Smith, a friend of the Doctor.”

“I fetch River. She is in the Codex of Leonardo da Vinci.”

Relief guiltily allows itself to touch his mind as he reckons he will not face her again. A disturbing little girl she is.

“Thank you.”

The words barely appear on the screen before a tense whirr escapes the computer, startling him.

“This is new. I didn’t expect you. John Smith? You are the meta-crisis.”

He reads a lot in that interrogation mark, but won’t delve into such considerations. Chance is she had access to every single document related to the Doctor, and time enough.

“Hello, Professor Song.”

“Not exactly.”

 _Blimey_ , he thinks, she types fast.

Only because she does not type, she probably just… thinks. Her mind and body are nothing but binary codes.

“Of course not. You can’t blame me.”

“No, I can’t.” He cannot tell whether she is teasing or giving him the cold shoulder. Smileys seem far from appropriate when talking to dead scholars.

“How did you end up here? You are still in Pete’s world.”

The tone she is not using appears to him as vaguely patronising. The laws of the Universes and travel between them are still known to him.  _Thank you_ , Professor. The way they are heading, the conversation across time, space and everything there is will see teeth and claws bared.

“When it comes to computer archive, it seems the walls between the dimensions are more permeable.”

You are just  _digits_ , he thinks. And yet he can _see_ her crushed expression, that mask of pain and restraint he witnessed back then.

“Be sure you put everything back together when you leave. Better safe. You must be serious with that kind of cheating. A crack in the fabric of the Universe can grow wider.”

“Always the careful one.”

 _In death_ , he wants to add.

He hates himself for that, for doing what he does because he can, because she can take it and he knows it.

He knew the instant she smirked back with an ‘always’ in a library so dark and silent  _he_  could sleep there.

His presence in here is unnecessary. His hurting her is expendable. And so unceremoniously at that.

Yet her knowledge of the Doctor’s future is the key to his freedom of mind. His suspicions are morphing into certainties.

“Would you help me?”

“What do you want?”

“I want to know what happened to him, after Davros.” He waits, uneasy. The keys are mat, no patina on them to indicate a frequent use.

She could refuse to answer, even if it is not spoilers anymore.

“Do you need to know?”

“Yes. It is a chapter I need to close. It is really important to me. To Rose also.”

Bringing her into the conversation, when he suspects what River is to the Doctor appears risky; even so he seeks her presence, one way or another, by his side, to keep him from hurting.

“You mustn’t talk about it to anyone, especially to her.”

 _Something wicked this way comes._ He is beginning to fear for the Doctor, as well as himself. After all, he was pretty unstable at the time of his confrontation with Davros.

“He travelled, alone. He met people, didn’t take any with him. He lost himself for a while, because being the last of the Time Lords means responsibilities which he forgot. He thought he was almighty, flirted with madness and faced the Time Lords again. But in the end, he made the right decision. He was not alone; he had Wilfred Mott and the Master. He regenerated giving his life for Mr. Mott and saved the Universe. He found time, before, to visit his friends.”

To feel he had  _somehow_  saved them. He would have done the same.

“Accounts of the multiple acquaintances he made in his tenth incarnation corroborate it.”

The way she tells him, the facts and mere realities behind the words fade before the sole story. Acts of bravery or cowardice are turned into legend by her phrasing. Peculiar. Either she does it intentionally to…help him? Or she was a fascinating archaeology teacher, even if unorthodox.

It seems so insignificant, such a tiny crumb of deeds to satiate what has been feeding on his life for so long. What the Doctor went through appears so huge and Dantesque in comparison with a courtship of three years, a dimension canon and two children. Insomnia strikes him as the tenderer end of the rod.

“In the end, he was alright?”

“Always have been.”

“The next one?”

“My Doctor? Do you need to know about him?”

“Curious. He is the one you who are you exactly to him?”

Truth is, his desire to process the information she previously gave is non-existent, so he rushes to the nearest escape route. In retrospect, he can’t begin to understand where from he picked up this idea both of them would go down the same road. There is only one way he could have faced the Time Lords and got away with it. It is a part of his life he wants closed.

The conclusion would have come to him without her help, he admits.

Without surprise, he went mad.

 _He_ would have. He certainly doesn’t need her to understand he will always be running, always be not okay. This wanderlust, this constant race before the face of the Universe either to escape suffering or dive right into, it has always been part of his personality.

Not _his_. The Doctor’s. End of it.

He could now leave her and have a chat with the New Girl on the edge of a dying star. Rather a monologue to think and ponder and step back.

The answer was as simple as it was cruel. He plainly _needed_ to record the depths of the Doctor’s fall in order to ensure the distance between them could never be shortened. How did he learn to despise him so?

He has already made his mind to leave, now.

Yet…

She is a mystery to him.

‘Who are you? No spoilers this time.’

Perhaps it is the computer part in her that immediately spits the words.

‘I’m his time-travelling gunwoman, his complicated time-event. I was the child of his future companions and a child of the TARDIS. She likes to play with humans in love. In consequence, I’m a Time-head, human with Time lordy bits, sort of. I was his wife. His genetically engineered murderer and genetically engineered saviour.”

_Too much information._

He slumps back against the TARDIS, hands flying up to rub his face.

Time-lord and human. His wife. A lot of things is starting to make sense. A lot of glances she cast him, a lot of grins, an awful lot of running.

He doesn’t want to consider anything about the genetically engineered baby. It seemed Davros’s accusations naturally lead to the ultimate weapon in the shape of a woman, someone born to kill him.

He is glad he is not the one she was created for.

She is bitter, reciting facts as if reading them straight out of a History book, except it’s her life; the very device she has seemingly used to ease him before now looks to him a breach in her self. Where is that woman he met at the Library, he wonders. Certainly not between those flickering biting lines.

 _Next Stop, everywhere._ Doesn’t she remember?  

Maybe she _is_ off, the upload could have failed. He had no way of checking.

Surely, her Doctor could not have let him save her _imperfectly_. He jumps back to the keyboard and quickly launches a search on another monitor, cold sweat hatching on his brows.

On screen, the names and titles associated with her are piling, adding to one another like a terse horizontal Tetris.

The Doctor’s Wife; Professor River Song; Child of the TARDIS; Archaeology teacher; Melody Pond; Time head; the Impossible Astronaut; the Child; Melody Malone; the woman who kills the Doctor; the woman who marries the Doctor; the Woman; Cleopatra; Mata Hari; Sophocles’ alleged inspiration for Clytemnestra, Mucha’s model n°2 (Mucha's studio, Rue du Val de Grâce, Paris); subject 30-61; prisoner 451R-

He stops the search, removing his glasses to rub his nose.

That is what she is now, only that.  _A name_. In his world, she has no reality beyond the memory space assigned to the numbers corresponding to her name.

She notices his accomplishment - how can she not? She lives in the computer. Or rather, she doesn’t.

“And I may have invented socks, according to some book by Pr. Ainsley of the University of Sensor II on Marpesia.”

And that’s all, a story to be discussed by someone who could well be her peer. Only she is there to read it and other stories, about him, from a time she doesn’t know, about people she will never meet, about digs on sites never built in her time but long after.

 _He_ would go insane.

She carries on, levelling at him what _the other_ should have faced. He doesn’t know how to respond. How do you comfort a computer? It has probably been gnawing at her for a long time and she needs to release that tension. It doesn’t quite fit the indomitable and fierce woman he met before. Yet, it could be that, not unlike certain files, she is in pieces in there. Her memories are allowed some space in the history partition, her personality would be in the mystery section, the measures and angles and ambits of her body in anatomy or, he is relieved she cannot see his expression, art department.

“I know he meant well. But I am dead. This isn’t me. Remember what you said.”

 _He, not me_ , he notes  

”Footprints in the sand.”

He knows what she means. She is an echo with the illusion of feeling. Had she been unaware of it, she could have _lived_ in the data core. But the moment she is aware of how constructed everything is around her, it shatters.

Data are not made to be eternally stored. Eternity is a very long time; he has had, before, the privilege to bear witness of its crushing steady step. The deeds, glorious deeds, history even forsook are still stored somewhere in the Doctor’s mind. Then eternity will descend on him and there nothing will stand out of the stories he had guarded.

“Time here is stupefying; it feels like I’ve been here for millennia and seconds. And there is no one. We are all dead here. My crew members are remnants caught in the system, reconstructed by a ten year old to keep her new mum from breaking down.”

 _She is alone_ , he reads.

A hand is clawing around his heart, squeezing out the unease and dread and letting them spread and tetanise his entire body. Whatever the Doctor had firstly planned for her, it is not unfolding as expected. He needs back-up. He wishes Rose were there. Even the TARDIS has the bearing of a secluded monk in her corner.

“This is not the Matrix.”

 _How does she know about it?_ Well, she would.

But, she is right, as always. No family of hers will ever reach her in her digital tomb.

“There is no one else in here and there never will be; not my family, not my friends, not him. For eternity. And I don’t want that. I don’t want an eternity with books. I’m a scholar, I read quite a few of them in my time. Especially, books that mention the Girl who waited or the Lone Centurion.”

He doesn’t know the names. He just realises, aghast, these are probably her family, people she cares about, turned into legends and myths the moment the Doctor entered their live. Like Rose, Defender of the Earth.

Being a story doesn’t fit her anymore, it seems. Heaven as a library. Within the walls, she still hangs to that blue book of hers, unable to forsake what is human and her. She cannot relinquish what she was to embrace what is before her. A book is still a container and its length and width and depth are not enough for her.

Slowly the understanding of what she wants him to do creeps at the back of his mind.

_Oh, you don’t._

“Stop it. I don’t need to.”

“You must. He would not. Never. But he would not stop trying to save me either. I don’t need saving. He was too selfish to let me choose my death.”

“I won’t. Ask Charlotte.”

“Out of the question. He chose for you, you are likewise trapped. You have Rose, you have Jackie.”

 _I have nothing but memories_ , he hears her say.

“And you would let CAL alone?”

“This universe has been thought off for her. She has…”

Of course, CAL is a martyr of the memory, her free will snatched from her long ago. A Rosalia Lombardo of the mind. Preserved for her family to know she is in a way alive. What good is it to her?

”All I have is memories”

“That is more than what Donna has.” He yells at the screen, forgetting to type. This self-pitying is proving unnerving, dragging him to God knows where.

Somehow it must have reached her because she answers.

“I don’t pretend it is anything but selfish and cowardly. I think I deserve some peace. You are not killing me. I am already dead.”

“He saved you!” He was steaming. ”He loves you _that_ much. He offers you  _immortality_ , more than he could give himself. More than I can give Rose, and Lord I love her.” He doesn’t even bother to type anymore. Shouting at a computer, it painfully reminds him of their last encounter. And it feels extremely gratifying.

“He  _saved_  you!”

“He saved me so he could be _remembered_!” He notices he can hear her voice, in anger lower than he remember. Which is impossible unless the walls of reality are thinning. The TARDIS is now behind the mainframe, slightly quivering. He should stop it now, reality is cracking and even he can feel it.

In her vault of numbers, River doesn’t and she doesn’t hold back. It’s a plea now, a desperate, raw confession. She shed her dignity and is spilling her guts; her voice is so strong, always a breath away from anger, his prayer to stop catches in his throat.

“This is _preposterous_. I am his greatest memorabilia, the ultimate storyteller of his epic tale.  _That_ ’s the reason why he could not let me go. Which human being in his right mind would truly choose an _eternal_ life? Very long, yes. But eternal! He may have thought of me as a Time Lady, I am  _Human_. Don’t let me be an abstract till the end of this blasted core. I’ll disappear anyway.”

The horror of what is happening right now should kick him out of the room, never to come back here. It is mercy –and the memory of an amazon unshakable in her faith in him- that urges him to stay and drag her back to her senses before he goes. Because he will, without killing her. She is as demented and fearless as Rose who would have endangered reality to get back to the Doctor.

“You know you’re lying. You _know_ how much he loves you, that time at the Library, you… Do you even _listen_ to yourself? Are you _punishing_ him?”

“For what? You don’t even know what he could have done. I forgave him a long time ago his trying to save me. Trying to defend someone without any knowledge of the case?”

“Don’t patronise me and don’t play games with me. I’m him and I know what I’m capable of,” he roars, caught off guard by the arrogance in his voice.

“So you already know he did it for  _him_  more than for me. Did the same with Rose on Canary Wharf. Because  _he thought_  it would be better _for her_ and that he owed her. He saved me so that his tenth self could go on a little longer uncrippled by my annihilation - I’m not kidding myself into believing there was anything left from my body. So that  _he_ , my Doctor, could feel he had not completely wasted my life – he didn’t, but  _he thought_  so.” She trails off before adding, for herself. “So that he could believe he repaid me for the regenerations I gave him.”

“Does he _really_ think it works like that?” He is startled by the information she just disclosed, which meant she could have at some point regenerated. It also provides him with _something_ to manoeuvre her carefully out of that deadly path she chose. He remains the only one physically able to delete her.

“Well, he’ll never be done feeling guilty. He did it out of  _guilt_  not love.”

“Bitter, are you. When did I start being so self-absorbed?” he ventures with mock-haughtiness. Banter had seemed a weakness of hers and another stick he can use.

“I’ll never know, your tenth probably was the worst. I hope it doesn’t change.”

“Not my problem anymore, is it?”

For a second, he believes they are out of the storm.

“Could she come back to him, do you think she would?” Her breathless voice is assured.

“No, she has grown up, she is not a child. She understands he could never keep her for himself forever. She is _human_ after all. Dying gives us size, you know.”

The moment he says it, he realises what she has done. She _is_ a match for the Doctor.

“ _Exactly_. Don’t let me be trapped here.”

“No. River.”

Walk away now.  _Be a coward_ , his mind orders him. Whatever awaits here should not be your responsibility.

_Whose then?_

He should not do what cannot be undone, a time machine cannot fix everything.

“I’m not going to beg you. I can’t ask Charlotte, I won’t have her carry this weigh on her shoulders; for years –I have no idea – I have been working on a program that could change her life in here. I _can’t_ erase myself because Dr. Moon has set a system that prevents it and the process will fail in the middle. I would be incomplete, half erased, half there. It has to be _manual_.”

“ _He_  has a say in the matter.”

 _Till death_  do us part.  _Really_? They are carrying it a tad too far.

“He has not. He has no rights on me. If he is _too stupid_ to understand I don’t want to stay here, I will not hesitate to hurt him. One of us has to suffer in this anyway.” She is not screaming, just seething. So sure of herself. She does believe he will do it. Doesn’t she?

“What if _you_ are too selfish to consider the fact you would break his hearts?”

“Then they will break. Better his than mine.”

 “You _are_ punishing him!” He opens his arms at the computer screen. The courage he has left is barely allowing him to stand there and repeat himself. What argument can he possibly put forward that she hasn’t thought of before?

“I’m not, he _already_  is punishing himself, already has been for centuries since our first encounter. And  _every time_  we were together, there was this veil upon his mind I could not get past. He was mourning me _when I was alive_.” Her voice is beginning to sound drained, as if cracked in place, losing its substance. Longing for amnesia, for silence, for death.

But he can think of Rose only; Rose who is mourning the Doctor when he is right here. He panics, because the way out for him is certainly not death. It is life, by her side.

He would not give a chance to his nightmares to take over his nights; he would not sleep, he would write her songs and make love to her till she is too far away to hear the breathing of a man awake at her side. The stories in his head have a reality beyond this Universe. So do dreams. This, he has to convince himself of.

“You can’t. Imagine he comes back to see you, to take you out of here. And he finds you have been  _erased_. There is always a way… ”

“Then  _show me_! I have the biggest computer of the galaxy and an eternity before me. I didn’t find  _any_  way out.” That haunted note at the back of her throat, as if a piece of heart had been swept along by her plea and caught between her vocal chords. “I’m not any mind _and not bragging here_. You can’t upload me to any computer. Part time lord, remember. It means a human brain would fry and a time lord one would… well, no need to speculate, besides his there aren’t many…”

“I get it but I still don’t have to…”

“Then you are no better than _him_.”

But he _is_  better than him. What was the whole point of him coming here and hearing her words if not to ensure he was not him?

Then it hits him.

She is tricking him, tying a web around him, playing with his mind to get him to do it.  _She_  definitely is no better than the Doctor. He can walk away any time now, not out of cowardice but sheer strength. Because it is her against him. She played the pathos card, she played the empathy card; she even tried to make him angry, to elicit spite.

He knows better than to fall for such a trick. They are not so different from one another in their situation, probably.

Except he has Rose and the assurance nothing lasts forever.

_River, why do you have to be this, here? Why do you have to be this flowing force that cannot be tethered or tamed? Even death would not stop you._

_I do not know you._

_And I never will._

_And I wish I did. But you’re probably one of those phenomena that should not be known, or studied, or copied._

Her despair must be complete. To forsake her here after her confession would provide him with nightmares corrupted enough to eat away his demons.

He already hates the Doctor for inflicting such pain on the woman he loves. He would not hate himself as a bonus.

“Just do it. If you have the  _humanity_  he has not.”

Stupid self, for marrying such a woman.

For minutes now, he has been staring at the screen, eyes burning, to the point where the room is nothing but that luminescent square on which her words are still popping up as her voice chants her lament.

She’s right, there is no body here to receive her mind. There is a limit to what a human being can endure. And he wouldn’t inflict it on himself.

Because there is always a way out.

He’ll never forgive himself for it.

“Don’t feel sorry, please. I forgave him long ago, you too.”

 _No, you didn’t._ She should have had a chance to and she never will. Because he cannot face those he left behind.

His shivering hands fall on the keyboard, weighed down by that heavy sorrow he hears each time she repeats “Please, help me”.

He shouldn’t be a bringer of death. Not in this world. He never could perfectly understand why he hated the Doctor. Finally he grasps why he can’t hate him. And that all that time, it was him hating himself and imagining he didn’t deserve Rose.

Because you can’t always win.

He starts running the program, sending a silent plea of forgiveness to the TARDIS, who has been watching his mind process, serenely.

 _One last run, hey_?

So that he can go home. Find Rose. And forget.

The whole business finished he would cut his hands.

***

It’s not a tunnel of light. It’s just extinction and darkness.

A bizarre headache that would take chunk of her head one by one and she can feel the pieces shifting away from her.

She can perceive her memories fleeting before her eyes, but cannot even peek at them for a last time.

For a moment, she thinks she could panic, losing her memory so literally would tear her heart apart if she had one. It seems there is too little left from her for fear to take over.

But the memories, reflexes, thoughts stripped from what was once her electric mind bare the core of herself, revealing a raw piece she is surprised to still feel.

Not memories, not feelings, something whole and essential. And part of it, she ventures, is the Doctor, her Doctor, and all the infinite nights and dawns they spent together or apart.

And that she still feels.

She doesn’t even burn to oblivion, she just wanes.

 

Like a flame.

 

Didn’t he use to say something like that?

 

 

Says who?

 

 

Now she can’t remember a thing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It burns.

He is before her one last time; she thinks she caught it, one last piece of her memory. A last flicker.

But it burns.

Because he slapped her, he actually properly slapped her. As she did so many times before when she was alive, when she… Except she is not supposed to feel pain. The only way you can feel pain is by damaging the script of your own program. She knows it.

Her cheek burns yet she remembers feeling for an instant the coldness of his hand, right before the pain spread. The blend of cold and warm. And pain. _Damn_ , breathing hurts; she feels every cell in her body vibrating, scattering. How can she…

She is snapped out of her thoughts by his lips, crashing against the cheek he hit moments ago, feeling her burning skin.

“You idiot.” He is white, absolutely. Trembling from foot to shoulders, her big boy. Eyes widened and breath hitching. Warm breath, ragged, that smells of salt and mint.

She’s standing up, maybe.

“But I don’t understand,” she begins. “Are you here? Am I dead? Am I properly dead, at last?”

He grabs her head between his hands, forcing her to look at him while her glance is roaming wild across the room.

The data core. In a corner, the Old Girl.

“River!” He shakes her head. “Stay here. You idiot, you wanted to quit. So little faith in me. Wouldn’t let me catch you one last time!”

His ancient eyes are so wide.

“You did it! How?”

“I didn’t.” He sounds panicked. “It’s the TARDIS. She just landed somewhere in New York in a Park, and there was a teenage girl, red hair…”

“Badly beaten, fell and cut her hand on a piece of junk, really separated her hand from her body…”

“She bled to regeneration. You remember?”

“I’m starting to. It wasn’t like that before. Somebody’s been rewriting…”

“And your hand, I took it, touched it, caressed it – you made a necrophiliac out of me, River. Thought it would bring you back, but no. It was nothing, just a piece of you, a piece of flesh. I’ve done nothing with it for a long time. Horrible memorabilia. But yesterday, I got readings the walls between the Universes were getting thin. Precisely here. The Library. I had to come. But when I came down here to find the source of the crack, I saw the screen flickering with words, typing themselves. Horrible words.”

His expression tears her hearts apart, but they flutter also, with joy, and pain. Because can’t be alive.

He violently shakes.

“How dared you! You wanted to…”

She is catching up, slowly. The pieces are not fitting together. She just feels his hands on her face and she hurts. Her senses are completely toppled as if she sees through her ears and hears through her tongue.

He’s not releasing her, just staring, while her mind -slow mind, small mind, what happened?- reels to work at the details.

“The meta-crisis, he must have done something.” She hears the breath that stands for her voice.

“I don’t know, I saw the program which really was obviously deleting 01010|01100|01111|10000|01010…”

“That’s me,” she cries out.

So she _was_ being deleted as she asked him to.

”Yes! No, that’s not you.”

He grips even tighter her face, crushing her ears, anchoring his eyes to hers.

“This is you. Oh, River, River.”

He suddenly gathers her in his arms, burying his face in her hair. She doesn’t react.

“I’m here, I can’t…. I felt like I regenerated. Is that even possible? My hand, it grew back to become a body?”

He surfaces, still not letting her go, and trumpets as if he just created a Universe :

“Not just a body. Your body! Using part of my bio-energy and the TARDIS just uploaded you in it.”

His face is beginning to quiver with tiny signs of exhilaration as he slowly acknowledges the reality of what is happening. She does not yet.

“But it can’t. She would have needed an enormous amount of energy. And she would have needed to be connected to the mainframe. It would have consumed her. Completely.”

Understanding kicks her in the stomach and she winces.

“What, are you okay?” he steadies her and feels her pulse –she has a pulse!

“The TARDIS, the other one, she was connected to the mainframe, she was the one who brought him there…”

Their TARDIS lets out a low moan, like a cry.

They stand still, eyes haunted. But he’s still clutching at her, feeling her figure, while her body seems disconnected from her mind.

Shadows are growing.

They rush to the TARDIS and take off in silence.   

Pain and joy run their body.

In the law of the Universe, sometimes, a life is enough for a life. And if that bargain has been made, there is a chance she is here, really here. Not a dream. Or maybe a dream, maybe some sort of paradise, but she is not alone.

They kiss and cry, for the TARDIS, for her, for him. To celebrate and to mourn. She is trembling and laughing and uncomfortable jolts run through her body, when she doesn’t expect it. To patch her up will take time.

At some point, she beats his chest as if she wants to smash down his hearts with her bare hands. She hates him for what he has done. Still.

He folds his arms around her and holds tight, eyes closed, while she hits and hits his back, scratching and not shedding a tear, until she collapses against him. Exhausted. Drained from everything that isn’t his warmth around her.

Strange, he used to feel cold to her.

As if they are now made of the same material.

Complete again.

They remain silent for an eternity. Held in the palm of the TARDIS, patient and understanding.

She is drifting into sleep when he remarks, timidly.

“River, you are naked.”

***

It took him weeks to find his way back to earth, 21st century. He travelled with the ashes, remains of dreams long gone and kept them.

Back home, finally, they mourned together as if they had lost a parent. It was only a ship. The only TARDIS in this Universe.

He saw the readings, that mad woman did it. The transfer had been completed and sound. He only had to enter the proper numbers at the proper moment. His TARDIS told him to. It was the first and the last time he could feel her as the Doctor would. His mind was connected to time and space and he was witnessing thrilling and mad interactions between two boxes on the edge of the Universe. Have you ever heard TARDISes talking to each other? It's the most beautiful thing.

The other TARDIS probably provided her with the body needed. He doesn’t know how.

No more TARDIS, no more improbable dreams. He would no more dash across the Universe, alone probably. No reason to escape now. Maybe he did become too old to dream after all. It was unfair to keep her here anyway. She would have outlived them all. Everybody has to come home at some point

Weeks after, they take a vacation together in Brittany and scatter her ashes in the wind from the Grand Bé, so that she can hear nothing but the sea and the wind. 

 


End file.
